No founder had as detailed a plan, or worked more diligently to create the kind of country he had in mind than Benjamin Franklin. Two things he knew were important were healthcare and having enough to eat. He was a founder of the first hospital on these shores, and worked tirelessly to create opportunities so that more and more poor people could move up into the middle class, thus assuring hunger would not be an American issue. As we prepare to vote it is worth considering where we are on Franklin's goals on the eve of the election.
Physical Health
In 1950, before the inception of the present illness profit industry, the United States, compared with the world's other leading industrial nations was fifth with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands.
In 2010 the United States position concerning female life expectancy had fallen to forty-sixth. And when both men and women were combined it fell to forty-ninth. Americans live 5.7 fewer years of "perfect health" -- a measure adjusted for time spent ill -- than the Japanese.
Is this the result of lack of spending on the part of the U.S.? Most emphatically it is not.
Health Policy expert Uwe E. Reinhardt, the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University, headed a team that specifically considered this. They found,
...per capita health spending in the United States increased at nearly twice the rate in other wealthy nations between 1970 and 2002.6 As a result, the United States now spends well over twice the median expenditure of industrialized nations on health care, and far more than any other country as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP).
Peter A. Muennig, assistant professor of health policy and management at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, in New York City, and Sherry A. Glied professor of health policy and management at the Mailman School of Public Health, and currently on leave as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), analysed Reinhardt's and many other studies, in a ground breaking exegetic survey of health care. They concluded that:
[N]one of the prevailing excuses for the poor performance of the US health care system are likely to be valid. On the spending side, we found that the unusually high medical spending is associated with worsening, rather than improving, fifteen-year survival in two groups for whom medical care is probably important.
We speculate that the nature of our health care system specifically, its reliance on unregulated fee-for-service and specialty care may explain both the increased spending and the relative deterioration in survival that we observed. If so, meaningful reform may not only save money over the long term, it may also save lives."
Hunger
It doesn't get much more basic that not having enough to eat. It is hard to think of America as a place where large numbers of people are facing hunger as a daily reality for themselves and, even worse, for their children. That happens in Africa, Haiti, someplace like that, but surely not here. You think not? Welcome to the American reality; millions of your fellow citizens routinely are forced to make life decisions based on whether they or their children will eat or go without in order pay for housing or medical bills. Today as we prepare to go the polls more than 1 in 8 Americans are now on food stamps, participation in the program has jumped about 70 percent from 26 million in May 2007, while the nation's unemployment rate rose from 4.3 percent to 9.2 percent through September of this year.
According to the largest study of domestic hunger ever done, Hunger in America 2010, a study which based on more than 61,000 interviews with clients and surveys of 37,000 feeding agencies "hunger is increasing at an alarming rate in the United States."
Feeding America, the largest foodbank system in the country has just reported it is "annually providing food to 37 million Americans, including 14 million children. This is an increase of 46 percent over 2006, when they were feeding 25 million Americans, including 9 million children, each year."
Here are more of their findings:
"Clearly, the economic recession, resulting in dramatically increasing unemployment nationwide, has driven unprecedented, sharp increases in the need for emergency food assistance and enrollment in federal nutrition programs," said Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America, which operates some 200 food banks across the country.
"It is morally reprehensible that we live in the wealthiest nation in the world where one in six people are struggling to make choices between food and other basic necessities," Escarra said in a statement.
She added, "[t]hese are choices that no one should have to make, but particularly households with children. Insufficient nutrition has adverse effects on the physical, behavioral and mental health, and academic performance of children."
Feeding America's report is far from alone in reporting this food catastrophe.
The Food Research and Action Center reported that: "In July 2010, SNAP/Food Stamps participation set a new record: 41,836,330 persons, an increase of 560,873 individuals from July 2010, the prior record level, and an increase of more than 6.2 million people compared with the prior July."
Further that, nearly one in five of America's men, women, and children -- 18.5 percent -- reported that they had gone hungry in the past year. This was up from 16.3 per cent at the start of 2008. Even more alarmingly they said households where children were present were even likelier to experience hunger. Nearly 25 per cent of these families reported hunger in the past year.
Perhaps worst of all, the Feeding America study shows just how close to the edge the entire private food network has become. A point which is important since anti-government ideologues expect what social safety net there would be, if they had their way, would be private. Feeding America says 70 percent of their emergency food centers are reporting "one or more problems that threaten their ability to continue operating."
As the Pew Research Economic Mobility Project put it:
While belief in this American Dream remains a unifying tie for an increasingly diverse populace, it is showing signs of wear, with both public perceptions and concrete data suggesting that the nation is a less mobile society than once believed. This is not good: the inherent promise of America is undermined if economic status is, or is seen as, merely a game of chance, with some having the good fortune to live in the best of times and some the bad luck to live in the worst of times. That is not the America heralded in lore and experienced in reality by millions of our predecessors.
The world Franklin hoped for us.
Tuesday we are going to decide whether to further degrade the already frayed social network that has left us in this situation. Our problem is not debt or taxes; it is an unwillingness on the part of a significant fraction of our citizens to recognize that for a healthy democracy to thrive, a nation must have a healthy middle class. A healthy middle class can only be achieved when a compassionate social government network assures a minimum quality of life. No other institution can do this. To achieve it we need to develop policies based on data, not ideological mantras.
Follow Stephan A. Schwartz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/saschwartz905
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1. We have driven corporations that create millions of jobs due to extreme taxation to other countries.
2. We have offed entitlements for so long that 50% of welfare recipients believe this to be a way of life,
not to mentions supporting millions of illegals.
3. State borders should be opened for healthy competition between insurance companies.
4. Healthcare for indigent, unemployeed, elderly, etc. should be addressed on a state level. There are
far too many penalties that need to be revised with state assisted healthcare.
5. As far as hunger, there are places people can go for free food and free meals.
There are far better ways to address our issues without nationalized healthcare. Americans have become fat and complacent due to entitlements. They want to pick and choose jobs they feel they would LIKE to do. Take away entitlements, you will see millions get off their duffs and work in positions they once felt they were to good. It's not up to the government to fix us - we the people need to fix US!!!!!
Why do Democrats act as if the government is the owner of the citizens’ income and can hold a blank check on our earnings?
The nature of the proper governmental services must be constitutionally defined and limited, leaving the government no power to enlarge the scope of its services at its own arbitrary discretion.
Where is the willingness to defend this ideal by saying, “Your health is your responsibiÂÂand if you truly cannot afford the care you need, then you must ask for private charity–not pick your neighbor’s pocket to pay for it?"
What a crock of baloney. A healthy middle class comes from a stable business environment that lets entrepreneurs create. There is seldom anything creative about the federal government. Even when it tries, it takes huge amounts of money, and then has limited success (NASA, the Manhattan Project, the TVA).
Government is far more often an impediment to the middle class than it is an aid to them.
If there is one thing that history has demonstrated throughout the life of this country is that Business is not interested in the welfare of its (disposable) workers. Look at any of the African Nations for evidence of the efficiencty of small Government, and tell me which one you wouuld like to live in? If the answer is none, why would you want to turn the US into such a thing.
You people keep shouting the same thing, I guess in the hope that being loud is equal to being right.
Sad Sad Sad
Thomas Jefferson
Medicare causes most growth in deficit, particularly that drug industry subsidy called "Part D".
Before you THINK of cutting Social Security, eliminate Medicare. Start with Part D, work down the alphabet, then Medicare itself if necessary.
Social Security goes to us seniors, Medicare payments go to MDs, corporations, drug companies.
We seniors can decide whether spend the money on food and shelter, or on useless tests and drugs that do not keep us healthy or alive. You may disagree with that, it's your prerogative, spend the money on yourself if you believe it works.
B. Franklin
You could anyway if the utilization review panel decids you don't have enough YPLL (years of productive life left) to justify it.
What? You haven't actually READ the Obamacare law EVEN YET?
Where is the willingness to defend this ideal by saying, “Your health is your responsibiÂÂand if you truly cannot afford the care you need, then you must ask for private charity–not pick your neighbor’s pocket to pay for it?"
Remember after 9/11, when Bush was acted what the average American could do to help fight the terrorists? His response wasn't to give blood or volunteer to help veterans, or even cut back on gas consumption. It was to go shopping, to go to Disney World. His press secretary said it was "an American way of life" to burn as much petroleum as possible. That's the modern American idea of a "sacrifice": consume more to keep the machinery going.
Sacrifice instead has been equated with letting others freeload on your hard-earned dime. Today, we have republicans saying that the only reason why people are unemployed is that the meager unemployment insurance is "too good" to motivate them to find work.
I shudder to think how this generation would have reacted to FDR's calls for sacrifice to win WW II.
The rights of the individual tend to trump those of society as the individual has no obligation to assist society in anyway. No one has an obligation to anyone else.
Regarding the 9/11 thing: the damage of 9.11 should never be measured in people. People do not matter. It needs to be measured in regard to financial/economic damage. A few thousand people can die without a lot of problems, but when their deaths cause billions of dollars in losses for the economy (they stopped flying plane, several prime developments were destroyed, the government overreacted and wasted loads of money, etc) it becomes a problem.
I married in 1987. At the time, the cost for our "small family" was 87 dollars a month...office visits were a co-pay of 5 dollars. Prescriptions were still more or less affordable---but they were covered too.
Fast forward to today...still a small family... totaling three. WEEKLY insurance cost is 125 dollars, with a 3K a year deductible, then a 20 percent co-pay. Prescriptions are now tiered, and if you actually use the drug your doctor prescribes, the cost is 75 dollars each. Our healthcare costs for the last three years have exceeded our mortgage, with tax and insurance included.
So please...apples to apples. "Health care" costs sky rocketed in the last two decades, forcing consumers to pay far more...for far less.
Simple question. Answer it in 4 sentences or less and then get rid of THAT problem and everyone will be better off.
1. People but health insurance "just in case" something serious happens...but health insurance USED to cover almost everything.
2. Because people are terrified of not being able to take care of themselves, or their families, they have gone along with the price increases. because a free market doesn't actually exist.
3. Medical providers have raised their rate, while insurance companies have been allowed to pull the "usual and customary" scam (which NO ONE actually charges.) in what they will pay, usually shafting the consumer in the process.
4. PACS and Special Interest groups have lobbied both in individual states, and the federal government to obtain special legislation that protects them from paying claims, or suing if they fail to do so, as breech of contract.
Am I close?
But there might be hope. As the US turns into Mexico or China (10 years ago China) or India then more developed societies--like now China and the EU and sort-of-now-sort-of-near-future India--will exploit unskilled uneducated Americans as a cheap labor source.
There are only two ways this flies. One way is welfare, and we are now living in the time of "having run out of other people's money". The other way is to have an employment sector where the stupid and lazy can provide value: cheap trinkets. And you what? There is something deeply wrong with being lazy, but there is absolutetly nothing wrong with being stupid. You can't help stupid. It's like ugly. You shouldn't denigrate or make fun of it because the guy can't help it. Stupid or not, the guy's gotta eat and understands the dignity of work versus the indignity of welfare.
A fix for this: local content rules. If you want to sell in America, some portion of every piece of the value chain of that product must be made in America. That includes engineering, raw materials, the whole gamut.
The DNA has remained intact for 3 centuries........with that clarity of vision I have seen this disaster building for 30 years (or more )
Watch this You Tube today! STUNNING -
‘I REMEMBER, SO I’M VOTING, AND NOT REPUBLICAN.’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BJfMPxQuiU
Meanwhile in America today, there are more people than there are jobs with decent wages to employ them. But the emphasis of our tax and regulatory structure encourages employers to seek out the lowest cost labor (overseas) or eliminate it entirely.
'When the people find they can vote themselves money,
that will herald the end of the republic."
Tough shit.
Whoever promises me the most "free" stuff (and it is free, the future has already said it will foot the bill) is the one that gets "my" vote. Election days are like Christmas and Hanukkah rolled into one glorious day of consumption.
The social values this country was built on is what made this nation great, it is our feelings for our fellow man that distinguishes us from those countries that allow all kind of horror upon it's people.
The republicans may gain a majority after tomorrows election due to the anger many feel toward the economy that GWBush left us, but I don't believe it will last for long. The majority of this country's population believe in social justice and the health & freedom that comes with it.....something the republicans have never offered this country.
Or it could be your insanity.
Not sure yet.
The company I work for, if fedgov does something stupid could within 48 hours simply re route all operations to Singapore. Including upper management. Closing down the US facilities would take a month. Bam. You do not understand the reality.